Build the hard part
Autonomous vehicles that work on ground nobody surveyed and in airspace nobody mapped. Design, build and test under one roof, with the course outside the door.
How we work
01 — OPERATING PRINCIPLESSix things we actually argue about. They are not posters — they are the tie-breakers when a decision is genuinely close.
- 01
The field is the referee
A result is what the platform did on real ground, logged. Simulation is evidence, not proof. Anyone can overrule an opinion with a test.
- 02
Own it to the ground
From the sketch to the part that gets fitted, to watching it fail on a site, to the change that fixes it. Handoffs are where accountability goes to die.
- 03
Conservative where it counts
Adventurous in perception. Boring, provable and deterministic in anything that can hurt someone. Know which side of that line you are working on.
- 04
Say the number
Requirement, allocation or measurement — always label which. An unlabelled number is a liability, and we have all been burned by one.
- 05
Build it here
Design, build and test under one roof, on the assumption that the loop from field failure to design change is measured in hours, not quarters.
- 06
Disagree early, commit hard
The cheapest time to lose an argument is before the part is cut. Once the decision is made, it is everyone's decision.
Where you would sit
02 — TEAMS-
Autonomy
Perception, world modelling, planning and the behaviour layer. One stack that runs on a ground vehicle and an aircraft without forking.
Sensor fusionWorld modelMotion planningSimulation & replay -
Mechanical
Articulated suspension, drivetrain, the hot-swap deck interface, and the structures that have to survive a site rather than a bench.
Suspension & kinematicsDrivetrainModule interfaceDurability test -
Electrical & embedded
Power stage, packs and BMS, harness, and the real-time safety partition that holds the envelope independently of the AI compute.
Battery & BMSPower electronicsSafety firmwareEMC -
Flight
Heavy-lift aerial: rotor and lift-module design, control and estimation, and flight test including the GNSS-denied case.
Lift modulesFlight controlState estimationFlight test -
Manufacturing
Taking both platforms from a build of a few to a build of many, without losing what makes them work.
Assembly processSupplier qualityEnd-of-line testFixturing -
Field operations
Commissioning sites, training crews, and turning what actually happens on a deployment into engineering priorities.
Site surveyRoute commissioningCrew trainingIncident review
Open roles
03 — SEARCH AND FILTER7 ROLES OPEN
Own the fusion layer that turns LiDAR, camera and radar into one metric world model, across both a ground platform and an aircraft.
Apply for this roleWHAT YOU WILL OWN
- Design and ship sensor-fusion pipelines running on embedded compute at rate.
- Build the calibration and time-synchronisation tooling the rest of the stack depends on.
- Take perception failures from field logs through to a regression case in simulation.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
- Strong C++ and modern Python; comfortable in a real-time constraint.
- Practical experience with LiDAR/camera calibration and multi-sensor state estimation.
- Has shipped perception onto a physical vehicle, not only into a dataset benchmark.
Behaviour and trajectory generation against the world model, solved inside the envelope of whichever platform is executing.
Apply for this roleWHAT YOU WILL OWN
- Own trajectory optimisation and the behaviour layer above it.
- Model platform envelopes so one planner serves both ground and air.
- Define and defend the interface between planning and the safety partition.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
- Depth in optimisation-based planning, MPC or sampling-based methods.
- Fluency in the numerical and real-time trade-offs of on-vehicle solvers.
- Willingness to sit in the field and watch the thing you wrote drive.
Attitude and position control for the AAMS-X1, including the GNSS-denied case where optical flow carries the estimate.
Apply for this roleWHAT YOU WILL OWN
- Design, tune and flight-test the control stack across the payload envelope.
- Own the estimator behaviour when satellite fix degrades or disappears.
- Define failsafe modes with the safety partition and prove them in flight.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
- Multirotor control and state estimation experience, in the air not only in simulation.
- Comfortable with the regulatory frame for BVLOS and DGCA operations in India.
- Rigour about test cards, logs and what a result actually demonstrates.
Independent articulation across six corners, and the hot-swap deck interface that has to survive the field.
Apply for this roleWHAT YOU WILL OWN
- Own suspension geometry, kinematics and durability for the AGMS-X1.
- Design the mechanical side of the module interface — latch, alignment, sealing.
- Drive test-to-failure programmes and fold results back into the design.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
- Vehicle suspension design experience, ideally off-highway.
- Fluent in FEA, tolerance stack-ups and design for manufacture.
- Has owned a mechanism from sketch through to a shipped part.
The real-time MCU that holds the envelope independently of the AI compute. It is the last thing that stops.
Apply for this roleWHAT YOU WILL OWN
- Own firmware for the safety MCU, its watchdogs and its independent power path.
- Define and verify the deterministic failsafe behaviours.
- Build the evidence trail a functional-safety assessment will ask for.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
- Bare-metal or RTOS firmware on safety-relevant hardware.
- Familiarity with a functional-safety standard and what compliance really costs.
- A conservative instinct about what belongs on the safety side of the partition.
Run pilot deployments end to end: site survey, route commissioning, crew training and the feedback loop back into engineering.
Apply for this roleWHAT YOU WILL OWN
- Commission new sites and routes with customers, on their ground.
- Own the operational playbook, training and incident review.
- Be the channel that turns field reality into engineering priorities.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
- Field operations experience with complex hardware in production use.
- Calm under a customer-facing failure; rigorous in the write-up afterwards.
- Willing to travel across sites in India.
Take the platforms from a build of a few to a build of many, without losing what makes them work.
Apply for this roleWHAT YOU WILL OWN
- Own assembly process design, fixturing and line layout.
- Build incoming inspection and end-of-line test for both platforms.
- Work supplier quality until the parts arrive right.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
- Experience taking a complex electromechanical product into volume.
- Practical knowledge of the Indian supplier base.
- Data-led about yield, takt and what is actually the constraint.
How we hire
04 — FIVE STEPS, NO SURPRISESThe whole process is published because you should be able to prepare for it, and because a company that hides its loop is usually hiding how long it takes.
- 01
Application
We reply within 10 working daysA CV, and a short note on one hard physical thing you built. What the constraint was, what broke, and what you did about it. No cover letter theatre.
- 02
Technical conversation
60 minutes, with an engineerNot a quiz. We walk through your own work in depth — the decisions, the trade-offs you lost, and the thing you would do differently.
- 03
Problem session
90 minutes, take-home or liveA real problem from our backlog, scoped to fit the time. You keep your work. We do not ship unpaid take-homes into production.
- 04
On-site
Half a day in BengaluruYou meet the team, see the build floor and the test course, and put your hands on the hardware. You should be interrogating us as hard as we interrogate you.
- 05
Decision
Within 5 working daysA yes or a no with reasons, either way. If it is a no, we tell you what would change it.
What you get
05 — TERMS-
Equity from day one
Every full-time employee holds equity. You are building the company, not renting time to it.
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Health cover
Medical cover for you and your immediate family, from your first day.
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The hardware you need
Machine of your choice, instruments on the bench, and a parts budget that does not need three approvals.
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Real test access
Lab, flight cage and articulation course on site. You do not queue behind a vendor to test your own design.
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Learning budget
Conferences, courses and books. If it makes you better at the thing you own, we will fund it.
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Relocation support
Moving to Bengaluru for this? We help with the move and the first month of landing.
Early careers
06 — INTERNSHIPS & GRADUATESWe run a small internship cohort and take new graduates directly into ownership of real subsystems. There is no rotation programme and no shadowing — you get a piece of the machine and the responsibility that comes with it.
- Six-month internships, paid, with a defined deliverable you present to the team.
- New graduates are assigned a subsystem and a mentor, not a ticket queue.
- We hire from any degree — or none — if you can show us something you built.
Talk to us anyway
The list above is what we know we need. It is not the boundary of what we would hire. If you have built something hard and physical and it worked, that is the qualifying condition — tell us what it was, what broke, and what you did about it.
Send an open applicationATEON Labs hires on evidence of capability. We welcome applications from every background, and we will make reasonable adjustments to our process on request — just say so when you write to us.